Friday, January 18, 2019

You Walk Into a Tavern

Verisimilitude. The "sense of place". One minute the DM is just talking about chairs and mead and then suddenly she inserts a few more details and the scene comes alive a little bit. This kind of attention is required for "3 orcs, 2000 copper coins" and they are required for shopkeepers.

They're also required for taverns.

Rhetoricians at a Window by Jan Steen

d20 Tavern Conversations

These aren't rumors. These aren't even necessarily quest hooks. This is the inane blather that you encounter whenever you eavesdrop on a few people having a semi-public conversation.

It's gossip, politics, and whatever passes for entertainment among a bunch of turnip farmers.

1. Taxes have been raised on honey and lowered on grain. Surely this proves that the king is afraid of bees.

2. Addition and subtraction might be godly but surely exponents are the devil's own handiwork. That's why usury is a sin.

3. If you get really drunk you float better. That's why we can't cut the navy's rum rations--they'll all drown.

4. You seen the new shirts that women are wearing? Makes them look like a goddamn sailboat. Supposedly prostitutes advertise their specialties by how they wear the buttons.

5. If you piss on a goat it'll never eat from your garden again. If you piss on other people's goats, they'll be more obedient, too. It's all about the piss, I reckon.

6. I swear, if I catch Old Man Bogard pissing on my goats again I'm going to catch him by his beard and dunk him in the river until he stops stinking like boiled cabbage.

7. I saw a bunch of ducks hanging out in a circle, and then I heard one duck quack, and then all the other ducks quack like they was laughing, and then they all turned to look at me, and I ran out of there quick, lemme tell you. I need another beer.

8. The priest is trying to send out coded messages, I think. Ever notice how he always stutters in his sermons? And not on random words neither.

9. Goddamn Joabites are everywhere these days. I caught my son playing with some Joabites the other morning, making shit out of spider webs. And folks these days are getting so lazy, just like the Joabites with their looms. You ever think the two are related?

10. Wise Old Sheppu ain't that wise. Milac was at his place fore last harvest, asking about the planting calendar, and he got a peek at her "magic book", an' it was just full of filthy pictures!

11. When the priests give sermons they must be reciting mighty spells of protection that would fry the brains of a lesser man and that’s why they don’t let us read the holy books: for our own safety.

12. It oughta be illegal what the duke's doing. Just cause they held a spear next to our boys doesn't mean that they ought to get free land here. Specially not land that used to belong to someone. Hell, they gave Jaxon's field to those bug-eyed weirdos. It shouldn't been sold and the money given to the war widows.

14. Farrmer McGregor is a fair and honest man. The only reason I don''t want him on the town council is because I once caught him fucking my goat. My goat! He has his own goats, so why fuck mine? Claimed it seduced him it did, but I know my goats, it did no such thing!

15. I wouldn't call myself a racist, but we just can't let dwarves into our communities. Today they're good blacksmiths and tomorrow they'll kill us all with some sort of magma cannon. I'm not saying I blame them but that's just how it is.

16. And I say we've taken their grief for too long. Those damn bastards steal our grain, molest our children, and shit all over the streets. So who's with me? Fuck birds! Fuck all of them!

17. The old duke's a bastard, the new duke's a bastard, and I bet his little brat will be a bastard too. About time we give an elf the job - at least we'll only need to deal with one bastard.

18. I heard Ethel's son is a coward, so they dressed up his big sister and sent her as a conscript instead. Why else haven't we seen her around? It was bad enough when the war was just gobbling up all our young men!

Aye! And Ethel’s girl going off to war means poor Ethel doesn’t have any strong hands around the house. That young lad of Rosa’s has been mighty helpful thereabouts lately.

19. Juggler? Pfft, that's just another name for sorcerer.

20. A heron isn't a real bird. That's what the Queen's wizards polymorph into to spy on us. It takes magic to balance with a neck that long I tell you, magic.

21. You walk into a bar fight. Everyone freezes on the spot. Then half the guys begin cheering and one bloke yells "Not fair, not fair, I demand a do over!"

22. I saw it I tell you, a boat as large a building, a veritable floating cathedral! Galleon's they call them. I heard the Sultan wants one built to be his traveling palace. THAT'S why we need Sinless Stan to write that letter for us! If the Sultan chooses our forest to provide the wood we'll never go hungry again!

23. You know some books, when you read them, they read you back. Just be careful what you check out in the library is what I'm saying.

24. If I let an infidel buy my goods, that just means that godless swine has less gold. I'm practically a crusader when you think of it like that.

25. That's what they drink in Urst, mead with eyeballs in it! THAT'S why they're invading. If they conquer us they're gonna tax every family an eye.

26. There's actually no dragon in the Dragon Bank - they just tell you that to scare away robbers. That's why the Bank is so successful, because no one would dare find out about the dragon.

27. The Pelican Glider from Galad is late. That must mean the Eastern Elves are up to no good, we should team up with the duchies and strike first!

28. There's a little drop of blood in every cannonball and sword. You need to give it a taste of blood before it can take a life. My brother's a smith; he told me that.

29. Yeah well it STILL doesn't make sense why things are backwards in the mirror but aren't upside-down. Even the wizards don't know. I think they're in on it.

30. Piracy isn't a crime. Crimes can only happen in a country and the sea isn't a country. Stands to reason.

31. I know you're not allowed to fuck goats, but hyperthetically, if you got a wizard to make an illusion of a goat, could you do it then? Would it be a sin? No, of course I don't want to fuck a goat but hyperthetically....

32. When you pay a toll you always need to include a silver piece to show the toll-man you're not a foreign spy. If you don't he'll have some "bandits" attack you down the road.

33. That tax on honey crap, it's because of MEAD, the favourite tipple of the Northern berserks, King Kollip put it up because he is a racist arsehole and also a wuss. Back in the good old days of King Athelfrith he wanted the Norse persecuted he just skinned the buggers and nailed their hides to church doors, none of these oblique fiscal attacks on obscure headache inducing beverages. Nosnikrap will be taxing orange food colouring next to mildly annoy the Tizer drinking Pixies, Athelfrith would have had a bounty out on pointy ears, day one. They don't make tyrants like they used to, do they? I mean it's not even illegal to point out that Kollip is pillok backwards, if anyone had said 'htirfletha' back in the day he'd have got a spear up the jaxie for being Welsh.

34. Goddamn shit that fell last St. Maple's warn't snow at all. I put my taper in it and it the frotzy shit didn't melt, just turned black and twisted. I don't know what they're burning in Barvenna, but whatever it is is fucking the sky up. I made the mistake of letter Mimsy drink and little and she's been in a right tiss ever since, squinting up her eyes soon as she sees me, nipping at flies. Ain't been drinking much water neither.

35. Remember when we brained Yosterman and his asshole cousin? Good, it felt good to finally see some justice done. Washed our hands in the same river we cast 'em in. Even the magistrate saw the wisdom in it, in the end. Never spoke against any of us, just left town like the magpie that he was, trembling in his lambskin. That's what I tell my lad, when he talks about Magatha and her milks. That's what I tell him, when he asks what he should do about her. But the lad doesn't have the stones. So that's why I'm here, drinking. A hundred roofs in this town, and not a single man left.

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I wrote the first eleven and last two. The others belong to

Max Sellers: 11, 18

Maxime Golubchik: 12-25

Enzo Garabatos: 26-27

Skerples: 28-32

Barry Blatt: 33

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I'm not going to count this as a Patreon post, since I didn't write half of it.

But I am going to count it as half a Patreon post, to be cashed in the next time I do one of these.

5 comments:

Aha. I got it. You give your players one of these the first time they go in but then you give them the second half at a different adventuring session. If they have good memories that will be hilarious for them but if they don’t it will be hilarious for you!